“I have to talk about how Jon basically saved my life,” said West. “So I’m in my baby momma’s momma’s pool house, and I’m talking to Jon and I’m just like, yo, as a creator, it doesn’t matter how big your house is, how big your name is, your job is to create while you’re here and if anyone is in the way of that, if anything gets in the way of that, you got to burn it to the fucking ground.”

He went on to recall, “So I said to Jon, it’s important. You have to save my life. I’m not creating and it’s affecting my music, it’s affecting our relationship, it’s affecting everything because I’m waking up in cold sweats every night. I want to fucking draw shoes, and it doesn’t matter if someone thinks that I’m supposed to be doing something that’s more important.”

An animated Kanye West on stage accepting his Shoe of the Year award.

CREDIT: REX/Shutterstock.

West began working closely with the Adidas team about 18 months ago to create the blockbuster Yeezy footwear and apparel collection, which debuted in full last February at a celebrity-filled runway presentation in New York and has since crashed servers and sold out at retail stores around the world.

He credited some of the success of the partnership to the fact that Wexler was highly knowledgeable about the world of hip hop. “This guy understood culture from Chicago, J Dilla, listened to all the albums,” West said. “If you guys want somebody to work with your company, find someone who knows about the person they’re talking to, a guy who’s got some real backstory.”

And while West heaped ample praise on the Adidas team last night for giving him the creative freedom to pursue his artistic vision for the collection, he did chide them for their budgetary restraints, causing Wexler to double over in laughter (and possibly shock?).

“They allowed me to be me and express myself,” said West. “But the contract said 25 SKUs, and for the fashion show I was supposed to do a collection with 25 SKUs — I don’t know how that was supposed to happen. And the original talent budget was $500,000 — I don’t know how I was supposed to put a design team together for that, but luckily I’m a multimillionaire rapper and I covered the rest of it.”

Click through the slideshow below to see more photos from the FN Achievement Awards.